PC electrical isolation from DAC

[Nick]

At last, with Paul's help, there is enough information to start to post comments on the Adnaco fibre system which provides total electrical isolation of the PC from the DAC.

General observation is that the system is extremely promising I think many of us will be seeing much more of it going forwards. Impact on sound is significant and it opens up interesting opertunities to place the pc hundreds of feet from the music system, which with Peters remote control system means the pc can be placed out of the listening room on a separate mains ring to remove the SMPS feed back into DAC and amps.

First the Adnaco systems

I have looked at two systems:

The first is a Remote USB optical fibre extension system.
Details at http://www.adnaco.com/products/s3a/

The second a remote PCIE host card also connected by optical fibre to the PC. Details at http://www.adnaco.com/products/s1a/

Both could be made to work with my 2011 cpu ASUS based pc. However the remote PCIe host system would only work with a USB 2 card fitted, it was VERY hard to install in my PC end to end in order to get it to work with remote USB cards and my NOS1. In the end I could not get it to work with USB 3 cards only USB 2. This is possibly down to my motherboard and 2011 CPU using a high proportion of system resources (DAM, interrupts etc) so this system may work for other people but it was not the solution for me and with the remote Adnaco USB 3 system working so well attention was very soon focused on that Adnaco system.

So the Adnaco USB 3 system.

Note that these comments relate to the sound when properly setup (more later). The effect on sound quality can be quite disorientating at first, somehow everything is the same but you just do not recognise the sound at first. After some time listening you realise that EVERYTHING is just slightly better than before. Detail levels go up, hash disappears music is more REAL.

I will not go much further with respect to sound quality now. During the testing Paul come over to mine to take a listen. Whilst he was here he helped to pinpointed a bery serious problem with my system which frankly prevents absolute assessment of the Adnaco system in my system (now fixed after 7 months of trying so many, many thanks to Paul and Peter in this respect). Paul has however borrowed the USB system for a week to try in his system and it is after trading mails on its performance that confidence is high enough now to post about the system. I think Paul hopefully plans to post some more detailed thoughts on the ststem.

Regarding setting up the USB 3 remote system.

First point is that the small SMTP supply that comes with the system will get things going very quickly but to a great performance the Adnaco has to have a high quality 5v linear supply. Also important if it can be done (in the case of the NOS1 at least) is closely coupling the Adnaco into the NOS1 signal earth, and shielding the USB shield to PE. It is also possible in this way to completely iliminate the use of the external USB lead when using it with a NOS1 (by direct connection into the internal NOS1 USB lead) which helps a little to reduce some edges in the sound. Overall it appears best to try to treat the remorte USB system electricly as a part of the DAC it is feeding not as a remote external interface. As a remote system it works well say 70% of the benefit but implemented within the NOS1 with a linear supply more is available. I am sure that Peter could sweat more from the system with proper tools rather than the trial and error subjective approach used here.

So an exciting development and more to come on this I am sure.

Nick.

Ps I would like to thank Mark at Item Audio for the kind loan of the two different Adnaco systems that I have been trying. Mark is defiantly one of these very rare hifi dealers that are genuinely passionate about pc audio. I have no ties with Item Audio and have paied full retail price for the USB system that I have kept to become part of my system.

[pedal]

Thanks for letting us in on this discovery. 

My dedicated music PC creates a little bit of fan noise, it is bulky (ugly) and the 600w power supply outputs heat. Getting it out of the living room is high on my list. But that means, as you addresses, the need of efficient galvanic isolation in order to avoid ground loops when running the PC on another voltage line.

Unfortunately I am not that clever with PC electronics, so I'll have wait and learn from your experience first. I don’t mind being spoon-fed about the process here!   

[praphan]

Hi Nick,

Very interesting experiment indeed!

I have read about someone using Adnaco S1A PCI/PCIe extender with SoTM USB2 card to create a 'clean room' environment for SoTM output to DAC. But have never heard of using S1A to isolate USB3 host controller. Based on your experiment, the R1USB30 approach is obviously more promising. From power supply standpoint, the outboard R1USB30 requires simple 5v input whereas R1BP1A PCI/PCIe extender board requires 24pin ATX input. I think it is easier to build 5v clean power for S1A. 

Couple of questions:

1. Did you try feeding R1USB30 with battery power?

2. How can you estimate the other 30% of performance improvement by eliminating the external USB connection? If that 30% improvement is proven and the 100% is so significant that Peter adopts this tweak, then we will end up sending NOS1 back to Netherlands again ?

3. Do you think it will work with LGA 1366?

4. You may like to borrow the upcoming Item linear ATX psu for testing and share the findings.

Looking forward to learning more about the sound quality improvement over onboard USB3 card approach.

Thanks for your experiments.
Best regards,
Praphan

[Nick]

Parphan hi,

The R1BP1A board can very easily be run from just a 3.3v linear supply with a 5v supply if needed, so there no need to use an ATX PSU. I used an ATX for my test install but as I mentioned is was very hard to configure and I could not get a USB 3 card to install.

In LGA 1366 sould be fine, Paul uses one I think and has the system set up right now.

The percentages were intended to indicate the proportion of the benefit from using the R1USB30A card is accessible using it's own SMPS vs using a good linear supply. The change in sound quality in absolute terms is very good but right now Paul is perhaps best placed to offer information as my system was not on top form when I tried the card out.

I did not try battery power just a good quality linear supply. The [EDIT R1USB30A remote] card needs 500ma so any battery would need to be both a fast low noise power source and be able to supply this kind of draw for hours.

The item linear pc supply sounds interesting but in my final config I plan to have the pc in a separate room powered by a separate mains phase withint he house so any benefit from the linear supply would be internal to the pc not via any lowering of noise transmision via USB or mains transmitted smtp noise into the DAC. These two issues will already will have been addressed by this setup. It would still be very interesting to try the linear atx supply, I suspect even in such a setup may well help music quality.

Best regards,

Nick.

[Scroobius]

Guys - having spent some time with this now (but alas not enough listening time yet) there are a number of things we have to careful about with fibre it is not just a question of electrical isolation there are other factors to consider (as Peter rightly points out). I have made a few errors in getting to a place where I can make consistent and quick changes between copper and fibre USB to make a useful comparison. I have also made a few false starts with settings etc. I am going to listen with some care this week and wait because Nick is visiting me next Saturday for a "boys with their toys" day.  I think it would be good for both of us to listen and hopefully get some consensus.

All the best

Paul

[Nick]

Paul,

I am really looking forwards to the visit this weekend.

Whatever the outcome for the USB fibre system when we hear it, you are right, it is much better to give it some time to listen carefully and be sure of how it really performs, good or bad.

Best,

Nick.

[AlainGr]

Has someone noted if it was more difficult to get a silent CPU core for music with the Adnaco S3B ?

Since I added the S3B, I can't get any core to be quiet, whichever core scheme I choose. I have 2 different pictures of my 2 cores, one without the S3B (with a quiet core), one with (no quiet core).

I also have encountered BSODs with this, whatever speed I select (there are dipswitches) between 5 GT/s and 2.5GT/s (Giga-Transfers per second).

I have a few pics included to show these results...

By the way, I only have a 2.6GHZ Intel CPU with 2 cores, 8GB of DDR 3 10600 RAM, in a Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71, very ordinary and cheap mobo (soundcard and video card all integrated), SPSU 180 watts, Noctua CPU fan at 800 rpm with a SOTM fan filter... (see sig).

Not sure what to make of this, but with the BSODs that I have encountered, plus the "pulse" that you can see (whatever scheme I try), I am not sure that this is a good addition ?

Alain

[PeterSt]

Hey Alain ... we could wait for you to turn up with this eh ?
Well, you can't say I didn't try to let hold you back from this. (a couple of xxx emails)

Anyway, now you have it, it is good that you do. And in general (for others) : I expect quite some problems with this, while it is not said they can't be overcome. So ...

Alain, while I was working on a similar solution (I had to give up upon), Nick obtained this (and the PCIe solution) which I only learned when it was on his doorstep (and which was after our emails). So, what happens now is that both Nick and Paul, and later me myself will try to squeeze out what's there to squeeze out. I am a bit sceptical, but this is theory only thus far.

It is to be noted that "we NOS1 users" can only look at it from that perspective, and the NOS1 is fairly different to this USB regard. I mean, it allows settings your device probably isn't able to. So whatever comes from it, it will be a NOS1 view. But this is why it's comfortable you now have one ...

All right. Those spikes you see are from the Driver. Or let's say the Driver communicating with the OS (better : transferring). You will be able to influence it with the Clock Resolution for sure, and possibly with the Device Buffer Size and Q1 (the product of both counts); I'm fairly sure that NOS1 users can use the latter two to influence; in your case maybe.

Those spikes are pretty severe of course, and it is not a good sign. For Nick/Paul : it is this what I told you about regarding more noise, more draw and which may act as a smoothening factor (ehm, as a negative). May may may and all theory.


About the BSODs, look here for a start : http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/help-need-to-diagnose-bsod-bccode-10d/23cd3e5c-a68a-4847-b5bc-8a610fd45f36?tab=MoreHelp
Does that look complicated ? sure it does. I don't think there's a real clue in there, except for that it is a good thing to update all your mobo drivers to the latest version now (something I would be reluctant about when all is running fine, actually).

From what I see in that little thread, I'd try it with Minimized OS and especially the LAN shut off. So, it looks like it is "network" related, possibly especially WiFi. Otoh, it looks like the 10d error is very generic and it may take a few hours of Googling before you can draw conclusions. Anyway, look for
bbccode 10d
without quotes to get a nice list.

I can tell you (but Nick can do that better) that the other Fibre solution from Adnaco gave all sorts of problems on the NOS1 as well, and it was not to overcome and it was returned. If this is the same for the USB solution for non NOS1 applications, it doesn't look good at all. I don't know whether Nick sought help with Adnaco, but if he did it would be interesting to know how they responded. Maybe not the real contents, but the "how" in "feeling".

I don't know more at this moment.
Peter

[PeterSt]

PS:

Might you be providing more screenshots of the CPU, please take care that the update interval is set to high. You may already have that, but only that way I can map it onto what I am used to.

[Scroobius]

I have had the ADNACO running all this week, I will check out processor loads etc tonight. Installation was not difficult but it did require update of the BIOS (something I really do not like dong) and once that was done the installation was straightforward (I did need to read the installation instructions though - not something we men like to do eh!!!). My machine is fairly new and a decent spec. the manual indicates that recent drivers etc are needed. So installation may not be straightforward for all machines.

Me and or Nick will report further after his visit here on Saturday there are a number of things for us to try

P

[Nick]

Alain hi,

I had a look at the S1A interface which looks similar to the S1B you have.

I had a difficult time getting the interface to install at Bios and Windows 7 device manager level. When I had overcome these problems I found that I could only install USB2 cards successfully, USB 3 cards could be seen by Windows Device Manager but would not work.

With USB 2 cards the system would play correctly with the NOS although I only tried this for a relatively short periods. I think there may have been a latency issue as I was getting occasional clicks in the music.

The USB 3 problems and possible latency issues meant that I quite quickly focused on the R1USB30B (USB fibre system) which is what Paul and I have been looking at.

I didn’t look at the CPU load for this USB card or the S1B stsems but we should be able to do this for the R1USB30B, its an interesting finding.

One interesting point is that there may have been an issue regards PCIe spread spectrum incompatibility for the R1USB30A (the older NEC chipset USB fibre card). This was explained in a PDF document now removed from the Adnaco site. It might be a good idea to try to disable spread spectrum on your PCIe if you can do this in your bios. No evidence that this is the issue but just in case.

Regards,

Nick.

[AlainGr]

Hi Peter,

What email are you talking about What day is it ? What planet ? 

At least I did not acquire it for the reasons that I mentionned (I hope you will believe me)...

Yes I thought that the driver was doing something and true, it differs depending on what resolution. Strangely enough, from .5ms to 10ms, the spikes keep growing from one resolution to the nextr (the picture was taken at 10ms for the sake of the example), then at 15ms it goes down (looks as if it was at .5ms)... I will show more of this with my next post. I also played with Q1 but I was less sure about the differences. Anyway, I will show more pics about the CPU with different adjustements.

I will also check about the Bios updates. I would be surprised that it changes something, because the PC is quite recent, but who knows...

I will also write to Support at Adnaco, just to see what they have to say about this...

Will come back as soon as possible.

If in the meantime, someone has questions, suggestions, or music to make me feel better about this last expense...

Thanks

Alain

[AlainGr]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the info. I will check with the Bios update, just to see if I can squeeze out something. I do update the BIOS from time to time when a PC gets older, but I had this one only 3 months ago. In fact, I would have liked to have a more powerful PC for my music (and I eventually will), but well, this one arrived "by accident" and I finally took it to replace my aging laptop...

When we see the video of the S3B on YouTube, the model shown has 3 outputs on the receiver side and it seems to be USB2 instead of USB3 (is it what you mean ?).

And... Like a man that doen't ask for directions I did not check for the necessity to have a driver for this, but finally checked further and executed the installation program...

I must admit that I was already happy with the results I get from my sound system, but this hobby... Well, I know you know

I will investigate as far as I can and will report back

Regards,

Alain

[PeterSt]

Alain, there is no reason to ever think that I don't like that you obtained the product, and of course there is no single reason to be accountable towards me. It is only that I hope to prevent people from buying things which don't work out, or seem to work out but don't, which is worse. So, when Nick posted about this, I had a bet with myself that you would be the first next. I won (although I don't know whether maybe you obtained it a month ago already).

And let's be clear : when this works for the better it is only a good thing.

One more thing :
This is only allowed for async USB, or otherwise it plainly can't work out (high jitter !).

Regards,
Peter

[AlainGr]

Hi Peter,

I have always been a stubborn kind of guy and I guess you were able to see this. I (too often) tend to obliterate a certain degree of caution and "try" new things... When it turns out fine as you mention, I can feel so enthusiastic

I will try to update the Bios (if possible) just to see, but I doubt it will change a thing about the "pumping" of the CPU core. I would have liked to ask the driver to switch to the first core instead of the "music" one from my chosen scheme (in my case, it is Scheme 2), but I guess that this is not possible with a driver... More than this, this driver is in the link...

Unless I am wrong, I think that the Audiophilleo 2 is async USB ?

Regards,

Alain
P.S.: When I look at all I have bought for the last 2 years regarding audio, I hate myself for not putting money aside for the NOS1. It's as simple as that...